Humanoid-universe.com

<t>Not sure I fully agree here.

Thermal margin in a densely packed humanoid chassis is often the real limiting factor on sustained performance, not raw motor power - actuators get thermally throttled well before they'd hit their absolute torque limits, especially during repeated high-load cycles ...

<t>@niklas29 Genuinely curious -

Pilot-to-contract conversion rate is one of the most important and least publicly available numbers in this industry - a company running many flashy pilots isn't the same as a company converting those pilots into multi-year recurring revenue. The market ...

@ivan22 Agreed, and I'd add: 1X's NEO platform is notable for explicitly targeting home use rather than only industrial deployment, which is a meaningfully different (and arguably harder) engineering and safety target than warehouse or factory-floor robots.

<t>@scott21 I don't think that's quite right, for what it's worth.

Active employers hiring specifically for humanoid-relevant roles span both established robotics companies (Shadow Robot, Engineered Arts, PAL Robotics) and the newer venture-funded players (Figure, 1X, Apptronik, Sanctuary AI ...

<t>Appreciate the detailed answer.

A strong, well-documented personal project (even a modest DIY build or a solid simulation-based RL project) reportedly carries real weight in hiring for this field, partly because the field is young enough that a demonstrated hands-on track record can ...

<t>Pretty much this. One thing to add:

IMU drift over time (bias instability) is usually the real culprit behind slowly diverging state estimates, not noise - it's typically handled with sensor fusion against other references (visual odometry, joint kinematics) rather than trying to eliminate ...

<t>This raises a question for me -

A whole-body control engineer's day-to-day work is a mix of formulating and tuning constrained optimization problems, debugging why a controller behaves differently on hardware than in simulation, and a surprising amount of time spent on numerical stability and ...

<t>@larrysokolov Short answer:

3D-printed gears wearing out is one of the most common early hobbyist failure points - infill percentage, layer orientation relative to load direction, and filament choice (nylon or reinforced composites tend to outlast standard PLA/PETG under repeated gear mesh ...

@elarsen69 This is a great summary, thanks. Boston Dynamics' commercial electric Atlas switched fully from hydraulic to QDD-style electric actuation, ending up quieter and lighter with comparable or better dynamic performance than the old hydraulic platform.

<t>@olga_lind This is exactly the kind of context I was looking for.

Boston Dynamics' commercial electric Atlas (launched for Hyundai factory pilots) fully replaced the older hydraulic Atlas platform's actuation with electric quasi-direct-drive joints, resulting in a quieter, lighter robot with ...